The United Nations notes that water use has been growing at more than twice the rate of population increase in the last century, and an increasing number of regions are chronically short of water. By 2025 two-thirds of the world's population could be under water stress conditions as a result of population growth and other factors. Water, especially potable water, is essential for all socio-economic developments and for maintaining a healthy population. As populations increase across the globe they call for an increased allocation of clean water for use, resulting in increased water scarcity.
A significant amount of water may be conserved merely by addressing the loss of water or degradation in water quality in systems caused by leaks or other adverse effects. Thus, one method of addressing water scarcity and conserve resources is to improve the operation, monitoring and maintenance of the utility networks used to deliver water, such as by faster and more accurate detection of leaks and other events occurring in such networks. Several systems currently exist to facilitate improved network monitoring in water utility networks. For example, commonly owned and above referenced U.S. Pat. No. 7,920,983, entitled “SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR MONITORING RESOURCES IN A WATER UTILITY NETWORK,” which is herein incorporated by reference in its entirety, describes sophisticated systems and methods for detecting anomalies in water utility networks using statistical and analytical techniques, some of which are in use by the assignee of the present invention, TaKaDu Ltd. Other systems available from other companies, such as those available from ABB Group or IBM Corp., also provide some improvements to anomaly detection in water utility networks.
One way in which the operation and monitoring of water utility networks may be further improved is by making better use of data from Geographical Information Systems (“GIS”s or “GIS systems”) and asset management systems. As known to those of skill in the art, a GIS integrates, stores, and displays geographic information about a network or system laid out in a physical environment. Applications using GIS allow users to create interactive queries, review spatial information, edit data and maps, and present the results of these operations in a graphical user interface. Further description and details of GIS systems may be found in “Getting Started with Geographic Information Systems,” Second Edition by Keith C. Clarke, which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety. As is also known to those of skill in the art, asset management systems store information about physical components of a network or a system such as a water utility network, such as pipes or joints, and are used in the operation and management of networks such as in fixing network components or in ordering new or replacement components. Commercially available asset management systems used to manage water utility network assets are available from a variety of entities, as known to those of skill in the art. Techniques and systems for improving the accuracy and completeness of GIS data are described in commonly owned and above referenced U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/371,911, entitled “SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR ANALYZING GIS DATA TO IMPROVE OPERATION AND MONITORING OF WATER DISTRIBUTION NETWORKS,” which is incorporated herein by reference.
The physical components of a water distribution network are typically situated underground and out of sight. As a result, leaks in the network are often hard to detect until leaked water or its effects become visible above ground and are reported to the network manager. By the time such hidden leaks are discovered a great deal of water may be lost and damage caused. The cost of such hidden leaks may include direct costs, such as cost of water lost or electricity consumed as a result of the leak, as well as indirect costs, such as cost of repair of damage caused by the leak or fines incurred due to the leak. It will be appreciated that the cost of any leak will typically increase the longer the leak remains undetected.
Because hidden leaks are hard to predict and to detect, utilities may carry out ongoing maintenance projects, such as replacing pipes and other equipment in order to prevent future leaks from developing. It will be appreciated that ongoing maintenance is labor intensive and costly and can be unnecessarily wasteful, for example when an old but functioning component is needlessly replaced.
In order to detect hidden leaks, utilities may run large-scale acoustic surveys aiming to identify hidden leaks which have not reached the surface. Such leaks may then be targeted for repair. However, such large-scale acoustic surveys are generally ad hoc and highly inefficient.
There is therefore a need for a more cost effective method for locating hidden leaks and identifying improved if not the best target locations for acoustic inspections. The present disclosure addresses this need.